


Memory (Haunts Me)

by Goodluckdetective (scorpiontales)



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 15:25:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4024999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiontales/pseuds/Goodluckdetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You think we’re going to fucking die!”</p>
<p>Not quite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory (Haunts Me)

You have dreams sometimes. About them.

They’re some of the most realistic dreams you’ve ever had. These trances lack the dulled colors you’ve come to associate with regular dreams, they contain a brightness that you’ve only ever related with waking hours. Most times, you don’t realize you’re dreaming until you wake up, a scream echoing in your throat.

York’s smile. CT’s fondness for cheating at poker. Maine’s soft, growling laugh. Each impression of your friends flashes behind your eyelids like a silent clip show. One you can’t turn off. And God how you’ve tried.

You didn’t used to dream like this. Your dreams used to be normal, typical stuff, like forgetting your armor on a mission, or running late to class. Stuff you could cope with. Until Epsilon came along. Until he tried to impale himself to death in the caverns of your own mind.

You’ve forgiven him for that. You’ve forgiven him for a lot of things. But forgiveness won’t make the nightmares go away.

Most of the time, your nightmares follow the same pattern. Take an old memory, twist it, contort it, let it fester. Same formula every time. But since the civil war, since Felix, since “Freckles Shake,” your nightmares have begun to add a new variable. Instead of taking memories from the past, they’ve started to pull from the present.

You wake up in bed screaming, an image of Tucker’s corpse still etched into your brain, and wish that you will never be visited by such dreams again.

Your wishes have never come true.

Griff plummeting off a cliff. Simmons crushed under a pile of metal. Caboose sliced almost in half. Sarge shot right between the eyes. Donut, Carolina, Doc, Lopez. Each is a horrific phantasm, variations on the same theme. After a week, all of your roommates know you have nightmares. After two, after shadows that linger under your eyes like scars, you start wearing your helmet constantly just to avoid questions.

A mask doesn’t hide all your tells though. It never has.

“You think we’re going to fucking die!?”

Grif is wrong. He doesn’t think they’re going to die.

He’s praying they don’t.


End file.
